


260 - Panic Attack

by storiesaboutvan



Category: Catfish and the Bottlemen (Band)
Genre: F/M, mental health
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 14:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14239611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesaboutvan/pseuds/storiesaboutvan
Summary: An original mini fic about gentle waves of loving comfort washing away searing panic.





	260 - Panic Attack

**Author's Note:**

> For my anniversary fic, I present to you a maybe poetic little thing that comes straight from the core of me. It’s a little bit of my soul, this. I hope you like it.

He’s lying on his side, propping himself up on one arm. His other sits awkwardly, waiting to move. To do something. He knows it’s there; it’s under your skin itching and crawling and ready to roar. He’s seen you like this before. You’re a ticking timebomb. The countdown has started. Each audible second echoes in his mind. How can you stop this? What’s the right wire to pull on? When will she explode in a frenzy of tears and blood? You watch him watch you.

There is an emptiness in you, a void that used to breed guilt. It lives in the place where your sympathy for him should be. He suffers, see. It hurts him to see you like this. Poor, precious baby boy. But no, it’s just a stark blackness there. He doesn’t know pain. You won’t waste your energy on pandering to his romanticised notions of boy-saves-girl. It doesn’t mean he is helpless to help though. And it doesn’t mean you don’t want him and his soft help. 

You feel it there; it’s under your skin itching and crawling and ready to roar. It’s not a pain, not really. It’s an invasion. A possession. Your entire body shakes and the only forms of exorcism are just as brutal in their own right. But that’s what he’s learning to be. He is your gentle exorcism. Just let him help you.

Slowly you show him your trembling hand. It’s palm side up and an invitation. He sits up on the bed cross-legged, pushing the covers aside. Your hand becomes a small map of roads and mountains and valleys to charter. As his fingertips meet your skin and slide across it with beautiful aimlessness, the magic already starts to work.

“Can I do the rest?” he whispers. The other spells in the exorcism ritual are his second language. A nod of trust and his hands move.

After your hands are mapped with perfect precision, your feet are kneaded until they’re tingling into oblivion. When your toes wriggle, happily and involuntarily, he smiles. It’s a tiny victory but it is still ten tiny victories nonetheless.

He crawls back under the covers, pressing himself up close to you. An unassuming gesture is a telepathic request for consent; he twists a piece of hair around his finger, then tucks it behind your ear. You push your face into his palm like a cat begging for more. It’s permission granted. He pulls you into him, one arm snaking under and around you.

“I love you,” he says but it feels redundant. The love is thick in the air. It’s enough that you could suffocate on it, but you stopped needed oxygen when you met him. You survived on love and lust alone. He did too. In a word it was symbiosis and in a sentence it was colliding stars, burning too brightly to live alone.

As his fingers brush through your hair, unravelling knots and remedying that it under the skin, you can feel yourself settle back into the serene shimmery midnight blue of sleep.

It’s hard to say if you’ve been twisted up and burning for only a matter of minutes or if it has been longer. Halcyon days or tempests on dry land, time with him exists differently.

Maybe you could say a ‘thank you,’ but like a lot of things that go unsaid between you and him, it’s already evident in the moment anyway. The love and gratitude and trust and devotion are evident in the clockwork calls from overseas tours, the handmade t-shirts worn with pride and bravado, the two way street of compromise, the Lyla and Niamh and lists of baby names in both your phones, and the nights like this.

Nights like this where it doesn’t matter how dark the dark is or the fact that it’s under your skin itching and crawling and ready to roar. Because there’s a boy named Van that’s trying his sunshine best to be the change you want to see in yourself and because there’s you in all your princess bravery and valiant daily rise and shines. Two after midnight exorcisms of deep-seated panic and rage can’t compete with that.

He’s lying on his side, one arm curled around you. His other lies across your waist awkwardly, waiting to move. To do something. He knows it had been there; just minutes ago, under your skin itching and crawling and ready to roar. He knows that it wasn’t the strongest thing in the room though. Not by a long shot.


End file.
